Energy disturbances due to a moving quark from gauge-string duality

TL;DR

This paper uses gauge-string duality to compute the energy density around a moving quark in a thermal plasma, revealing a sonic boom and complex small-scale structures.

Contribution

It provides a detailed position-space analysis of energy disturbances caused by a moving quark using AdS/CFT, including novel insights into small-scale features.

Findings

Identification of a sonic boom at speeds exceeding the sound speed

Confirmation of small-scale structures near the quark

Fourier transform approach linking momentum and position space

Abstract

Using AdS/CFT, we calculate the energy density of a quark moving through a thermal state of N=4 super-Yang-Mills theory. Relying on previous work for momentum-space representations as well as asymptotic behaviors, we Fourier transform to position space and exhibit a sonic boom at a speed larger than the speed of sound. Nontrivial structure is found at small length scales, confirming earlier analytical work by the authors.